


Silent Burden

by procrastinatingbookworm



Category: Moana (2016)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Maui is bad with emotions, Maui-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 12:35:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10719462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: or: Five Times Maui Said He Wasn't Broken, and One Time He Admitted That He Was





	Silent Burden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inkedinserendipity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkedinserendipity/gifts), [paperjamBipper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperjamBipper/gifts).



I.

It’s Rangi who finds him, sitting on the mountainous entrance to Lalotai, absently tracing the patterns carved in his fishhook, eyes distant. His free hand taps on the stony ground, keeping the beat to some song only he knows.

“Maui?” the creator god asks, settling beside him, his robes shifting with the movement of some self-contained wind. “Maui, _keikikāne_ , what troubles you?”

The demigod takes a deep breath, his hands going still. The tattoo on his back, sprawled across his shoulders in blue-black ink, weighs heavily, like the sky upon the backs of men. Looking downward, he’s sees the ocean far below, blue and bright, crashing onto the shore before drawing back with a scrape of rock and sand. As a hawk, he would be able to focus on the individual grains of sand, but right now he’s just a man, not even a man, a boy. A boy with curly hair that only just starts to hide the mark of his abandonment, spread across shoulders that will someday be broad and muscular, but for the moment are still weak and soft with youth. Maui, trickster, demigod of the wind and sea, and still just a boy cast out and, for the most part, unwanted.

“Nothing, _makuakāne_ ” Maui lies.

 

II.

Maui’s arms and chest are covered in burns by the time the humans below are content with the speed the sun moves, his hair smoldering and his eyes watering from the heat and pain and smoke. He gags on a breath that tastes of burning skin and clamps his teeth down on the urge to be sick.

He lets his hook fall into the dirt and doubles over coughing, chest heaving, shoulders trembling, what little breath he can manage coming in gasps. The humans explode into cheers, and Maui wipes his streaming eyes and folds the hand that isn't clutching his chest into the thumbs up. He can't speak past the smoke in his lungs, past the rattling wheeze that is his breath, but he must pretend for the humans that he is not weak.

 

III.

He can't remember how old he is.

It’s his own fault, really. He stopped keeping count around two hundred, and he knows from the way the world has grown around him that it’s been awhile since then. The years had passed quickly, even as each day dragged on, intolerable, aching. He doesn't even have a guess as to how many years have passed in his lifetime.

It’s never been something to celebrate before. The day he was born, the day he was thrown into the sea, abandoned, proved to be worthless and unwanted.

He’s on some island, faceless, nameless humans singing his praises, sitting in the shade, sharing a piece of breadfruit with a couple of songbirds, when the realization of his own timelessness and the helpless empty that lives in his head comes crashing down.

He starts laughing as an excuse for the tears in his eyes.

 

IV.

Maui pretends, a pattern of thought and action that has become as natural to him as breathing, as shapeshifting, as singing his own praises, as tying his hair back when he fights, as casting illusions. It’s as easy as the most basic movements, a facade too ingrained in him to be pushed aside completely, if at all.

He drags himself out of Lalotai pretending he feels victorious, pretending the tattoo on his shoulder is a badge of honor and not a scar, a mark of failure, pretending to be happy with the monster blood covering his hook and hands.

He pretends that the gasping hitch in his breath is because his ribs broke under Tamatoa’s claws, that it’s not the echoes of words forcing sobs from between his clenched teeth. Pretends that he’s hunched over out of pain, not because the grief wrapped around his heart is too much to let him stand. Pretends he’s wiping sweat and blood from his eyes and not tears. Pretends he’s fleeing to recover and not to mourn.

The humans, as always, believe him. Cheer as he lifts the severed crab leg and trust the his gritted teeth are a smile.

 

V.

Even from the highest point on the island, all he can see is blue. The ocean surrounds him, like it does when he is sailing, but he is not wayfinding, he is imprisoned. He keeps his gaze forward, staring out at the sea, so that he doesn’t have to look at the island below him, nothing but grey-black rock and cream-colored sand, images of his hook carved into the stones with tally marks.

He’s forgotten what he’s tallying; days months years breakdowns grains of sand nightmares regrets. There are two full hook shapes and half of another, meticulously carved, a reminder of why he doesn’t fling himself into the sea, of what he was, and could be again.

Maui leaps off the rock with a howling, wordless mockery of his warcry, not looking down, and a jagged stone tears an ugly gash across his shoulder when he crashes into the beach. The only things that keep the disgustingly childish urge to break down from the agony and shame of it are habit and the itch on his chest (his little tattoo’s seemingly perpetual concern has skyrocketed into terror, and he’s dealing with more than enough without a miniature version of himself trying to get his attention.)

He lies there in the sand and grits his teeth until his jaw aches, and waits for the sky to stop spinning before he sits up and wipes at his face (not specifically his eyes, he convinces himself.)

Crawling on hands and knees into the water, Maui stares at his reflection for a moment, panting. Small eyes, reddened, ringed by shadows. A half-healed scar across his cheek. Mouth twisted with pain. Hair matted with sand and salt.

He kneels there and ignores the itch of his inked doppelganger’s worry, ignores the ripples breaking his reflection, ignores the pain pulsing in his back, ignores the ragged hitch in his breath, and doesn’t move for a long time.

 

i.

The first time Maui sees Moana after Te Fiti, he is only passing by, flying in hawk form over the fleet of boats commanded by the Wayfinders of Motunui, led by Moana, and she smiles and waves, and he hopes that when their eyes met, she understands his silent promise to return.

He follows through on that promise two months later, and she flings herself into his arms just as she did when they parted, laughing through her tears. She’s still small, short enough that her feet down touch the ground when she clings to his neck and shoulders, and his hands fit around her waist when he tosses her into the air and catches her again, arms going around her with an urgent gentleness that he doesn’t have words for.

Moana mumbles something into his shoulder, and he shifts, jostling her in his arms until she’s not tucked so firmly against him. “What was that, Curly?” he asks, eyes bright, breathless with joy. “Can’t hear you when you mumble.”  
  
“ _Ohana_.” She breathes, one hand moving to the back on his head to draw him into a _hongi._ “Ohana, Maui.”

He’s spent enough time around humans to know the word means family. But this curly-haired non-princess with her arms around his neck and sand on the bottoms of her feet is the first person to ever say it to him.

He buries his face in her hair, folding her in his arms as though he can keep her there forever. “Moana…” he tries to laugh, but his voice is wavering, wet and choked, and any other words die in his throat.

She pulls away to smile at him, and his knees almost give out at the love in her expression. Even through his blurring vision he can see fondness shining in her eyes.

“ _Ohana_.” he chokes out, not hiding at all how much he needed that word, that assurance, how much he needs her.

She knows without him saying another word, because he doesn't feel like he needs to pretend, not around her.


End file.
